Beware the vacuum cleaner!

It sucks. They suck actually.

Humour me for a minute. And look back a few years, assuming it’s been a few years. Back to the time when you were this cocky little twit who thought the world would change its angle of inclination, with but a glare. Angle of inclination, quality of public toilets, the few tonnes of gold in Dalal Street, whatever got you off.

Come back. Look again. Still that cocky?

I have a few adjectives to help you articulate what you see.

Disillusioned. Confused. Rudderless. Dazed. Stagnated. Sold out. Compromised. Married. Unhappy. Pissed.

I wonder why I, and you, relate to these wretched words. More so, considering the impossibly romantic missions I, and you, started out with.

Amnesia? Denial? Or some totally filmy f#$*ing “circumstances”? Nope. I, and you, still remember that stupid f#$*ing dream. It’s there, in the back of the head, like a throbbing f#$*ing migraine.

Then why this rut? Why this mucky marsh full of tiny green bugs with black dotted wings? And why me, and you?

It sucks. They suck actually.

EMIs. Credit cards. Petty politics. Minor irritants. Some office psychopath’s sycophancies. Insecurities. Fears. Their virulent tendencies. Prejudices.

They suck. Like a regiment, no, an army of vacuum cleaners. They suck away joyfully. Gleefully. At what I, and you always thought will define you. At what I, and you thought was indestructible. Inscrutable. Impossible, even.

I, for one, have had enough.

Know where the plug is?

Top 10 reasons why I've not changed my site's design

1. That bleeding Stumble button!
2. 4 other jobs that I still have to procrastinate.
3. The bloody phone rings every time I start!
4. Shit! I don't remember this one! Sorry.
5. The fine tuning in the layout, which I'd again postponed.
6. Gym time!
7. Weekend's just a couple of days away!
8. I get this horrible twitch on the far corner of my left eye every time I start. Must be some HTML bad luck.
9. Porn!!
10. I'll write this one. I promise. Honest! Cross my heart swear to rot in Hussain Sagar Promise.

Monkey on the mind

Did you ever have this feeling that there was a voice in your head? Telling you, urging, pleading, pushing, badgering, teasing, and instigating you, to do something. Constantly and mercilessly yakking its way through everything you do, or even try to do.

Something that is not stupid, but super stupid. The kind of thing that people first laugh at, ridicule and then put down as absolute insanity. Even suicide.

But that voice presses on. Constantly and mercilessly. Because deep down, somewhere in one tiny crevice of your brain, you know it might just fly. Because deep down, you don’t want that voice to stop. Because deep down, you believe. Grudgingly, but surely.

It’s the kind of voice that will tear your world apart and paste it in a completely different configuration. The kind of a voice that has absolutely no comfort about it. The kind of voice that you’ve been waiting for all your life.

What do you do with this monkey?

Why do I want to go?

To Mongolia?
Coz I know so little about it.

To work?
I have to pay for Mongolia, right!

Away from her?
Coz she’s left me nowhere else to go.

To Hitch?
He rhymes with me.

To the next channel?
Hopefully the next one still has ads.

Home?
I run out of reasons to stay out.

To my barber?
For no reason now, actually.

To the North East?
I really liked dog the first time I tried.

To the loo?
Hell coz I need to go!

But, why do you want to go?

Not a mistake

Like in any story worth telling, there was this girl. She had a huge load on her heart, weighing her down, killing her one day at a time. But she could not rid herself of it no matter how hard and no matter which way she tried. Till she met this guy.

He lent her his ear, his patience, his words and a little bit of his courage. Phone bills soared on either end. Nights seemed to have no end. Chat windows ran to 300 plus lines. Slowly, leg after arm, she pulled herself out of her ditch.

Her respect for him had no bounds. And his love for her just kept growing. They grew stronger together with each passing day.

Till one particular day. A day that meant a lot to her. A day that he knew meant a lot to her. A day that she spent waiting for him to come. All day, all night by the phone, and by the window.

He never came.

Her heart broke. And after all those months, so did the tears.

He knew he screwed up. And that he screwed up bad. He called, apologised, explained and tried every thing that he could think of. But what he did that day broke something he never expected to end up breaking. Their bond.

Phone calls went unanswered. The chat windows dried up to monosyllables. And the nights got longer. But he had no reprieve.

Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. He begged and he grovelled. He did to no avail. He tried to make things happen. Nothing happened. He spent every night praying for one opportunity to go back to that day and undo the one wrong that he’d done to her. Neither God, nor she was willing to grant him that.

There was realisation, remorse and there was regret. But there was no forgiveness.

As the months passed, a few phone calls resumed. She called when she needed help. He leaped forward to help, hungry for every brownie point he could bag. And he called her when he was troubled beyond his means. She listened.

He conspired and created situations to be with her. She obliged. She came. She had her assortment of men for the moments. And he waited on the sidelines for a crumb to fall his way. Too bad, she was too clean.

Everything that he had given turned to dust because of one wrong. And he could never stop trying to right that wrong. But water under a bridge, is water under a bridge.

So one night, feeling lost, feeling alone and like a loser, he sat and he thought.

“Where was I wrong? Making the mistake? Trying to unmake the mistake? Or falling in love with the wrong person?”

{perspectives, opinions, criticism and cuss words solicited}

What's in a name!

A little before my brother and I were born, Vasanta and Charyulu had this understanding. They would have two kids, girls ideally. The first one would be named by Charyulu and the next one by Vasanta.

To their immense disappointment, I was the first successful sperm.

Now, however disappointed, Charyulu had to find this name for me. The dutiful son that he is, he asked his mom, her sisters, Vasanta’s mom, her dad, their brothers and sisters, and their parents, wherever available, for a suitable name for this 2 and a half kilo packet of nuisance.

For the lack of a more suitable expression, bless their souls, each of them suggested a letter. Charyulu collected all of them and the count came to 26. And he put all of them together into four words so it would not be too hard for them to pronounce it. They had to call me by this monster after all, you see.

And so I have more letters in my name than boxes in an application form. Lines in an app form are found a little wanting too.

But calling someone by a 26 letter name to suggest the use of a potty instead of a saucepan is rather difficult, considering the tsunami of a rage that tends to accompany such instances. So Charyulu chose the shortest part of my 26 letter train for daily use.

And so, the world calls me a 4-letter word.

Soon.

Scared. Excited. Worried. Holding my breath. Vacillating. Eager. Confident. Guarded. Unsure. Prepared. Nowhere near it. Determined. Nervous. Like steel. Irrational. Frantic. Tired. Impatient. Absolutely scatterbrained. Bubbling. Bursting. Petrified. On the edge. Back. On the edge again.

I've waited 12 years to feel exactly like this. And I can't wait one minute longer. Ladakh, here I come.

Reclaimation.

If you had to look back on your life, what would you remember?
The promotion? The performance bonus?
The plaque in the conference room?
It does not take supreme intelligence to know what really matters.
And yet, you do little besides look in the distance and sigh.
Wouldn't it be tragic to realise too late that you didn't see the trap? That you didn't recognise the two words that are the biggest curse of humanity... 'maybe someday'?

I'm leaving for Ladakh on 17th May, 2008.

Not on a Safari. On a Bullet.

Black screen. Green letters.

This feels like the computer I used in 1987. Remember those days of "Logo" and "Basic". Damn I was good with that shit! I drew a house using all those lousy commands. I was probably in 4th Class (Grade, if you like). And could barely boot a computer with DOS. And I drew a house with things like rt 45, Lt 90 etc. My computers teacher was so excited, we thought she was having a seizure.

Talking about excitable people, do you remember that guy Siddhu? Yeah the same one who swallowed the unabridged volume of English Idioms whole. If you were to stand right in front of him when he's in one of his English moods, I'm guessing, you'd have a nice shower of morning dew.

Actually, if you've ever seen Doogie Howser M.D., I guess this is exactly how he must've felt.

Ah! but you're not seeing this clump of gibberish right now like I am. Kinda like seeing the ad for a gargantuan, plasma-LDC-projection-3D television on your old EC TV (God you remember those days!).

So click here. And hit F11 once the window opens. You'll see for yourself!

Holier than thou?

Ad people are a strange lot.

I was at the Goafest about a week back. It was the most exciting festival I’ve seen in a long, long time. I love it. The sun, the parties, the unlimited alcohol, the sea, the unbridled passion for great creative work, basically everything about it. Which is exactly why I’ve been at all the three editions of the festival.

But the one thing I’ve not been able to get a fix on is how people don’t mingle. There is no animosity, or hatred (I put that a little too strongly for the loss of a better word to describe exactly what I mean). But there is that invisible boundary. A space, if you like, that cannot be breached. People are social, having fun, accommodating and all, but they just don’t mingle.

Why? Maybe it’s this deep-seated “our-work-is-better-than-yours” feeling. Or it’s that fierceness of competitive instinct and passion.

But its definitely there. Why else would even the most charming act I put up not let me land even one chick (in spite of the fact that she’s obviously interested)? Alright, I’m a little boring. But then, even the more charming guys ended up with zilch.

There is obviously something wrong. And I wonder “what it is!”

I don't know what to call this.

You want something really bad. And it steps right in front for you. You look at it. Closely. For all of 15 seconds. And you brush it aside. "Nah! Not this." And then you're restlessly, incessantly looking for something that you don't really want, but just think you do.

Guess nothing should come easy.

Yawn!

The worst part of a really hard week is the weekend. No, I’m not kidding you! It’s really like that! All the work that you have to do for yourself somehow finds a way to just pile itself out, and leave you with no choice but to deal with them on the two days that you hope to catch up with some shut eye. God alone knows how this happens! Well I think that’s exactly what every chronic procrastinator’s going to give you.

Anyways, this weekend was one of the worst I’ve had in the recent past. It was Diwali. So there was loads to do at home. And then there was the freelance that you never find time for during the week. So, deadline on head, I work from 10 am Diwali morning to 8 am the next day, finish it, deliver it by 12, and get down to edit a film at the studio. (Which, by the way, found exactly that very day to go horribly wrong.) Work all night again, and get the first glimpse of the bed at 9 am the next morning.

That’s 48 hours non-stop.

Ok. So I finally hit the bed. Then what. 2 hours in, the phone (@#%&@!) decides to scream its tonsils out. Up again. I deal with the phone, something else comes up. It’s evening soon and there’s that hot girl waiting for me to catch a movie. So I catch the movie, down a couple of beers and head home at 3 am to hit the bed. The next thing I know, it’s 7 am on Monday and time to rush back to the grind.

Status now. Awake: 64 hours. Asleep: 6 hours.

Now, like all Mondays, this one was a bitch. And I ended up getting screwed around till 2 in the night. And then I hit bed. It’s 6 am and mom needs something real bad. So off I am scratching my backside, running errands with dog breath.

Situation. Awake: 96 hours. Asleep: 10.

By now, I feel completely out of my skin. I have goose bumps every 7 and a half seconds and yawn every other minute. I decide for the 37th time in 2 minutes to tear the pharynx out of Himesh Reshammiya. I hate tube lights, my art partner’s ultra sonic sneezes, laughter, the sound of a mouse click, and the entire species of client servicing. And I feel like I’ve had 71 cups of coffee.

Again, the day has a mind of its own. And I reach my bed at around 4 am. I decide that you have to be really demented to take clothes to sleep and sleep with my left shoe on. 7 am, and the damn alarm. Arrgh!

Awake: 120 hours. Asleep: 13 hours.

It’s 10.32 pm on Wednesday right now. And I have not the faintest how and where I’m gonna end this.